Desperate to manufacture national
support for Gov. Scott Walker's (R-WI) attempt to strip public employee unions
of collective bargaining rights, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus posted a message
on Twitter citing a Rasmussen poll as evidence
that "America Stands with Scott Walker." Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has
issued a statement
of solidarity with Gov. Walker, retweeted Priebus' message.

Noting that Rasmussen has had "problems
with bias" before, however, Nate Silver explains that the
results of the poll may not be reliable because the question asking respondents
to take sides between the Wisconsin governor and the union workers was preceded
by three questions worded to introduce bias. One of those, he wrote, was so bad
that it amounted to "a talking point posed as a question."

The issue is clearest with the third
question, which asked respondents whether "teachers, firemen and policemen"
should be allowed to go on strike. By
invoking the prospect of such strikes, which are illegal in many places (especially
for the uniformed services) and which many people quite naturally object to,
the poll could potentially engender
a less sympathetic reaction toward the protesters in Wisconsin. It is
widely recognized in the scholarship on
the subject, and I have noted before,
that earlier questions in a survey can bias the response to later ones by
framing an issue in a particular way and by casting one side of the argument in
a less favorable light.

The Rasmussen example is more blatant than
most. While many teachers have been among the protesters at the State Capitol
in Madison, obliging the city to close
its schools for days, there have
been no reports of reductions in police or fire services, and in fact,
uniformed services are specifically exempted from the proposals that the
teachers and other public-sector employees are protesting. So bringing in the uniformed services essentially makes No. 3 a talking
point posed as a question.

As an
analogy, imagine a survey that asked respondents whether they believed the Democrats'
health care overhaul included "death panels" before asking them whether they
approved or disapproved of the bill over all.

Silver's advice
is to "simply to disregard the Rasmussen Reports poll, and to view their work
with extreme skepticism going forward." Meanwhile, a USA Today/Gallup poll out today finds
that 61
percent of the public is opposed to laws like the one proposed in Wisconsin
that deny public employee unions collective bargaining rights.